The Kirkus Prize is one of the richest literary awards in the world, with a prize of $50,000 bestowed annually to authors of fiction, nonfiction and young readers’ literature. It was created to celebrate the 81 years of discerning, thoughtful criticism Kirkus Reviews has contributed to both the publishing industry and readers at large. Books that earned the Kirkus Star with publication dates between November 1, 2014, and October 31, 2015 (see FAQ for exceptions), are automatically nominated for the 2015 Kirkus Prize, and the winners will be selected on October 15, 2015, by an esteemed panel composed of nationally respected writers and highly regarded booksellers, librarians and Kirkus critics.

"A wonderful discovery for the scholars, who will find Capote in possession, in his early 20s, of a confident voice and fine storytelling skills. But Capote is for readers, and here they will find a pleasing—if surely dated—entertainment."

A work of literary archaeology that reckons, in a roundabout way, as Capote's debut—save that he put it aside to work on Other Voices, Other Rooms, and this elegant, brief novel was lost.
Read full book review >

"Though the late Capote became a pathetic self-caricature, the one who wrote these brilliant stories deserves to be remembered. (Also see Gerald Clarke's Too Brief a Treat: The Letters of Truman Capote, p. 720.)"

Twenty stories that reflect the late (1924-84) journalist and storyteller's graceful vacillations among urban horror stories, Southern Gothic local color and melodrama, and limpid memory pieces.
Read full book review >

"But the overall effect, somewhat wearying even at novella length, is shiny and shallow—with nothing to suggest that a completed Answered Prayers would have been anything like a masterpiece."

Published in Esquire in the mid-1970's but never before in book form, here are the three extant chapters from Capote's notorious, never-finished "non-fiction novel" about his society/literary friends—part roman Ã¡ clef, part naked gossip using real names.
Read full book review >

"Providing at best a minor if affectionate footnote to the author's work, the story first appeared in Redbook magazine for December of 1986."

Written by the late Capote at age 22 as a gift for an aunt, this is an innocuous, very faintly charming short story about a boy and his parents leaving the boy's childhood West Virginia farm home ("a trip. . .further than I'd ever taken before") and leaving the boy's grandparents behind.
Read full book review >

"A fair enough little sliver of autobiography, complete with slipcase and outsized price-tag—but more poignant as a reminder of Capote's waning productivity than as a story proper."

With just 21 pages of large-print text, this autobiographical snippet (which originally appeared in Ladles' Home Journal) is even briefer than A Christmas Memory or The Thanksgiving Visitor; more crucially, perhaps, it's far less cozy than Capote's previous childhood stories—with only brief mention of Truman's surrogate mother, elderly cousin Miss Sook.
Read full book review >

"Overall, however, it's a depressing gathering—and, if Capote genuinely believes that 'Handcarved Coffins' is better written than In Cold Blood, the prospects are hardly very promising for his long-awaited, promised-soon novel, Answered Prayers."

A distressingly thin and uneven new collection from a man who's clearly been having a terrible time at the typewriter; in a painful introduction, Capote reviews his whole career and tells how he recently realized the limitations of his previous work and arrived at a new style—first-person narration, severe and minimal, heavy on transcript-like presentation of conversations.
Read full book review >

Capote thinks of himself as "a planet wanderer" — a man who keeps musing along no matter the consequences (Gide told him, remember the Arab proverb: "The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on") and these selections from his writings represent where he's been, "a prose map, a written geography of my life over the last three decades, more or less from 1942 to 1972.
Read full book review >

Were it not that the gently luminous features of the brilliant actress Geraldine Page, who appeared in Capote's Christmas Memory on TV last year, haunt this latest fictional memoir like a benign ghost, one might balk at the author's slide into commercial sentimentality.
Read full book review >

"It is also reminiscent of William Goyen's House of Breath in its use of the wind symbol and a poetic, fluid language."

This second novel by Truman Capote is acute and contained, and provides an appealing modern folktale which is full of humor, tenderness and his particular type of antenna-awareness.
Read full book review >

Doubtful- yes- for the critical reception accorded Truman Capote last year- and the sensational success of his first book will establish acceptance, in many quarters, for this, his second.
Read full book review >

"The 'journey' progresses from uneasiness to madness, as Joel sees his father, hopelessly invalided and speechless, and learns from Randolph of the shooting which had crippled his father, and watches the gradual deterioration of Randolph, etc. Grotesque, experimental, for a limited audience of initiates, who may, possibly, have encountered this writer first in a Martha Foley collection of 'Bests.'"

A distorted, hallucinatory and—for the common reader—only dubiously intelligible interlude in the childhood of a young boy, Joel Knox, his "journey through dying rooms" as he leaves New Orleans to find his father at Scully's Landing.
Read full book review >

Be the first to discover new talent!
Each week, our editors select the one author and one book they believe to be most worthy of your attention and highlight them in our Pro Connect email alert.
Sign up here to receive your FREE alerts.